Maple Street Biscuit Company

Looks like Biscuit Belly is getting some competition. Maple Street Biscuit Company plans to open at 1004 Bardstown Road, where Yang Kee Noodle (and before that, KFC) used to be.

Maple Street is a chain with about three dozen locations, mostly in the Southeast. It started as an independent business but is now owned by Cracker Barrel. According to the Charlotte Observer:

Maple Street is a modern comfort food chain that first opened in Jacksonville, Florida. Menu offerings include a variety of stick-to-your-ribs biscuit sandwiches, as well as waffles, grits and oatmeal bowls, southern-style sides and fresh-squeezed orange juice.

[Robin Garr]

Good catch, Rich! Let's not forget that Boujie Biscuit started the trend here, and they possibly got the idea in turn from a long-standing West Virginia chain, Tudor's Biscuit World. It's hard to innovate with biscuit sandwiches, but you can certainly do them well!

I find it interesting that Maple Street Biscuit Company has chicken as the only meat available in their biscuits, seems like that would limit their appeal to some people. You look at the other ones Robin mentioned and they all have several different meats available in their biscuits. While sausage biscuits are available at every other restaurant place in town and biscuits and gravy biscuits are very common the only place I know that has ham and steak biscuits is Hardee's and they've had biscuits for a long time.

The rise of biscuit centric restaurants may be new here in Louisville but when we lived in Anderson South Carolina (79-90) we had a biscuit restaurant called Katherine's Kitchen that was a biscuit only restaurant they had a huge variety of flavors. Country ham, city him, steak, chicken (fried and grilled) as well as a great cinnamon raisin biscuit! As something wife said they now are appearing all over because there are too few grannies making biscuits!

That is curious. It looks like half the biscuits have chicken, bacon, and a different veggie or sauce. BB's (both of them) biscuits have more variety, and are local. Still, that's a visible location, has sat empty for awhile, so I hope they have some success by expanding the market.

[Robin Garr]

Just for information, here's hometown news coverage of the 2019 sale of the chain to Cracker Barrel. In the world of corporate acquisitions, $36 million isn't a huge, er, barrel of money.

https://www.jacksonville.com/news/20191 ... ker-barrel

I've eaten at the Maple Street in Chattanooga before and thought it was very good, but that was prior to the sale to Cracker Barrel. I'm hoping that we will also get a Tudor's here as well, seeing as how they have finally made it as far as Lexington.

I'm glad to see something coming back into that location. I don't see why they wouldn't do well there.


Tudor's does good biscuits. They would likely do fine along the edges of Louisville and in certain parts of town. But their food in general is out of line with the typical fare in areas such as St Matthews, Highlands, Crescent Hill, Nulu, etc. They would need to take it up a notch in my view. Its a good model that has worked for years as a source of pride in West Virginia. But it tends to cater to the tastes and expectations of a different generation and demographic than the biscuit/breakfast places cropping up in the aforementioned areas in the Ville.

There was a Tudor's Biscuit World here in the 80's...corner of Hikes Lane and Klondike Lane...most recently a fast food Chinese spot. I stopped at Tudor's quite a bit as I lived in the area...my waistline still indicates it!

Maple Street Biscuit plans to open sooner than I would have expected. From Business First:

A Maple Street Biscuit spokesperson said the company is aiming to open the new location by the end of January — a date that is contingent on the fluctuating Covid-19 restrictions. The restaurant will employ 25 people, and plans to promote two of those positions to team leaders. They also plan to hire one assistant community leader.

https://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/ ... it-co.html

Stopped by this morning on my way home from platelet donation to get some food to go. Quite an interesting operation! Order at the counter then pick up your food. I have NO IDEA why they aren't using their drive thru in the era of COVID. They call out your order using the answer to a question the cashier asks you to "get to know you better." This month's question is "Who is your favorite band?" So, I heard "The Beatles" a lot and "Aerosmith." The problem is, people forget what to listen for so "Barbara Streisand" was belted out several times before a manager finally brought the food to a lovely middle aged woman. Good guess but it actually belonged to the 4-top of gay men. I guess these types of gimmicks are the 2020's version of TGIFriday's "flair."

While the "get to know you" stuff is a joke, the food was quite serious. The biscuits were massive, flaky, buttery and yummy. The gravy was creamy and very peppery. (Husband pointed out the gravy was a smidge too thick - milk would be an easy fix.) Kid cleared hers and went straight upstairs for a nap. Street donuts were hot, greasy and sweet. Reminded me of the ones I used to make from canned biscuits and that's not a bad thing. We got a chicken biscuit too but I'll have to get back to you on that. No one had any room so it's in the fridge for later.

Full disclosure - I like the food at Cracker Barrel. I know it's a chain but the staff is local. (In light of that, I sent an email to the address on my receipt wondering why I couldn't tip at the counter. They should fix that!) This was good stuff and I'd go again. It's worth at try.

[Robin Garr]

Thanks, Alexis. Great review!

Picked up a couple of biscuits and a side today and we were quite impressed. Everything was well executed, food wise. The three layer cake side dish was particularly tasty although as Alexis' husband observed, the gravy is a bit too thick (delicious, though). One thing I liked about the chicken biscuits we had were that they weren't so overwhelmingly huge like some of the other biscuit places.
Also, they are now using the drive through for online pickup, but their communication seems to still be working out the kinks. We had three different people ask us the name on the order for the almost fifteen minutes we were sitting there. We got the sense that they hadn't even seen/started the order when we pulled up at our designated time. But, they handled it well by comping us a couple of cinnamon biscuits and a giftcard so no harm no foul. We'll go back.

Maple Street Biscuit Company closed its Louisville restaurant in late March. A company official told Business First that it never gained traction at that location. Despite that, Maple Street expects to return to Louisville in a different location “in the near future.”

I had wondered whether the Highlands was the best spot for a national chain. And it couldn’t have helped when Big Bad Breakfast opened only half a mile away.

Maple Street Biscuit Company closed its Louisville restaurant in late March. A company official told Business First that it never gained traction at that location. Despite that, Maple Street expects to return to Louisville in a different location “in the near future.”

I had wondered whether the Highlands was the best spot for a national chain. And it couldn’t have helped when Big Bad Breakfast opened only half a mile away.

Thanks for mentioning this, we were just talking about we need to get back down there yesterday, I guess we missed our chance. We didn't get down there very often because it's quite away from our home but we always enjoyed the food when we were there. I think you're right about your comment about Big Bad Breakfast being a huge influence on their closing.